The two major commercial available 3D immersion technologies are the cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) and the head mounted display (HMD). The CAVE is an immersive virtual reality environment where projectors are directed to a plurality of walls and a floor of a room-sized cube. The walls of a CAVE are typically made up of rear-projection screens or flat panel displays, while the floor can be a downward-projection screen, a bottom projected screen or a flat panel display. The user wears 3D glasses inside the CAVE to see 3D graphics generated by the CAVE. The HMD is a display device worn on the user's head or as part of a helmet where the HMD screen covers the sight zone in front of the user's eyes displaying a 3D virtual environment.
The image projected on the CAVE or presented on the HMD gives the user the feeling of being inside and a part of the environment located in the image. Generally, to achieve this perceptually convincing feeling the images or videos are needed to be previously processed or prepared before projecting or presenting them on the CAVE or the HMD. This processing or preparation cannot be done in real time where it requires a long period of time and complex procedures to be done. In fact, until now there has not been a universal technology that enables converting pictures or video to immersion in real time. Once this technology is invented the 3D immersion applications will be dramatically spread to serve various innovative educational, training, gaming, and entertainment applications.